Epic new installation at the National Maritime Museum as part of their new Sammy Ofer Wing. (Kin have a new Compass Lounge there also – more on that later). You’re equipped with a ultra-violet torch which reveals text in the space and is used to interact with a series of projection ‘pools’. All with the aim to highlight the effects we’re having on the environment up there, and in particular the melting of the glaciers. Once you get over the novelty of the torches and twig it’s UV light altering the projected ‘ice’ it becomes quite poignant. A very different and unusual exhibition for any museum, much more like an immersive art piece experience.
An exciting more-than-a-prototype-but-maybe-not-completely-finished-yet modular robot by Modular Robotics is making me wish I had the $300 they wanted for a starter kit (which sounds pretty reasonable for what you get but you know). Really really cool- great kids toy- but also one for my Christmas list. Link:here.
Ben Bashford & Friends made this prototype/ experiment / hack called Display Cabinet and It’s great. Another effective example of physical computing and RFIDs hanging out and working in the real world. Link for full write up: here
Great bits of tech scavenged from around the internet via BERG, Russell Davies, Its Nice That, and I can’t remember where I found the projection mapping sand sculpture. (Fucking WordPress is being weird I’m being stupid but I can’t get videos to embed- you’ll have to trust me and click the pics to check them out- sorry)
A couple of really nice clock designs- both web based and both are a bit sort of fuzzy and inaccurate. They give a feeling of time rather than accuracy- I like that. Click the pics to visit the sites. Helvetictoc by Tobie Langel. Blockclock by Futurefabric and Airside.
I’m not into this sort of stuff (twitter, facebook and raving on the whole web 8.2 or whatever we’re on now), but this talk distills down the way it can be used for good (as opposed to facebook type evil).
This is a machine which as far as I can tell- has a story loaded on it and then takes keywords and compares those to keywords in patents in the US patents office- it finds the images associated with the words and then draws them- a drawing for every word. So you end up with a story told in amazing diagrams and drawings. Read the website, watch the video…….. link: http://storyteller.allesblinkt.com/
- People like things- they don’t mind paying for an object (as opposed to web/ internet related stuff)
- A tacky figurine might be better than 1000 photo files on a cloud when it comes to recalling or remembering a holiday
- Screens aint all that
- People are amazed that internetty type data can become physical- especially personalised objects
- As old tech and practices change the infrastructure they used begin to become more accessible to the little guy (we’ve broken your business now we want your machines.)
This guy: Andre Michelle rocks. Seems to be some kind of audio code, tech master. This pic is of a tenori-on-like device which makes soaring soundscapes when you hammer at it’s buttons- even if you’re shit it just seems to work out somehow.
Be sure to check out his other stuff too I really like these too-super ellipse and pulsate.
